It appears to me like the Religious Right is trying to conduct an orderly retreat from the political realm and the culture wars. The new chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, has a much different attitude than his predecessor, Richard Land. But even Mr. Land seems to be in retreat:
In an interview, Mr. Land said the Southern Baptist leadership is divided into those who think the culture war is lost; those who are weary and want it over; and those who think they are losing the war but feel victory is still possible. He declined to say where he puts Mr. Moore, but said he counts himself among the latter. “We are like where Britain was in 1940, under heavy attack but still not defeated,” he said.
He might be engaging in some tough Churchillian talk, but he acknowledges that the war is not going well.
Baptists are departing from the religious traditions of their childhood faster than any other Protestant group, according to statistics gathered by Pew Research, an independent polling organization. Adult baptisms within Southern Baptist churches, meanwhile, have slid 20% over the past decade, according to LifeWay Research, a polling firm tied to the Southern Baptist Convention. The firm projects the church’s membership will fall by half to 8.5 million by 2050, returning to the level of the mid-1950s.
Recent polls have found younger evangelicals drifting away from some of the conservative views of their parents and grandparents. A March survey of nearly 1,000 white evangelicals by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan polling organization, found half of those under 35 favored same-sex marriage, compared with just 15% of those over 65. The younger evangelicals were more likely to be independents over Republicans, while the opposite was true of their elders.
“The religious right was born on the theology of numerical expansion: the belief that conservative churches grow while liberal ones die. That conceit is gone now,” says David Key, director of Baptist Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
This brings to mind Jonathan Chait’s thesis that the conservative movement saw the 2012 election as a now or never contest for all the marbles. They felt like they had one last chance to win the culture war and that, if they lost, the war would be decided against them. And then they lost.
Everything that has happened since then in Washington: the backlash against Republican efforts at accommodation, the ever greater frenzies of protest, the rejection of traditional notions of compromise and attainability — this is what never looks like.
On the surface, it appears like they are fighting as hard as ever, but behind the scenes there are signs of recognition. It’s not only that the leader of the Southern Baptists is arguing for less political engagement, we are seeing the same thing from Pope Francis. I noticed that Pat Robertson opposed the government shutdown.
Some evangelical leaders compare the moment today to the retreat that followed the 1925 Scopes “Monkey trial” over Tennessee’s effort to limit the teaching of evolution in public schools. The trial led to a public backlash against evangelicals.
“Evangelicals felt a sting from the culture after the Scopes trial that they weren’t used to feeling,” says Mark Dever, an ally of Mr. Moore and pastor of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church. “What is happening now with evangelicals is a disabusing of any idea of a simple victory of the right in a fallen world. They realize that is not going to happen.”
It’s interesting that Mr. Dever talks about “the sting” of public disapproval because that was what I was talking about in my piece yesterday On Cake and Political Identity, where I said that Republicanism is no longer respectable in the Mid-Atlantic.
…[Mid-Atlantic Republicans] find it increasingly embarrassing to self-identify as Republican because it has come to mean that you are a religious fanatic or an economic illiterate or a science-denier or a homophobe or a racist or the kind of guy who thinks rape can’t cause pregnancy.
Sixty years ago, Mid-Atlantic Democrats felt the same way about the party’s southern wing, and they spent the next twenty years slowly disentangling their party from its southern anchor. It’s true that this led to a long period of weakness at the national level, but I don’t know any Democrats who regret the divorce. Perhaps Mid-Atlantic Republicans will feel the same way sixty years from now.
In any case, I do think the larger battle is won, but that we are living in an unfortunate period of political turbulence and the death rattle of the conservative movement is somewhat deafening. We’ll get though this and be better for it, but it isn’t going to be pleasant.
